IT Convergence Technology Research Laboratory

areas for Research & Development

  Study on Spatial recognition technology

A Robot is a machine that senses, thinks, and acts (Bekey, 2005). A robot system refers to a system that integrates and utilizes various technology components, including robot sensors, processor, software and hardware platform. Robot system technology, therefore, considers integration of various heterogeneous technology components (which include modeling of each individual technolgy component and working environment of the robot, control of the robot to fulfill a given task, user interaction, and evaluation technology) and ensuring reliability as most important.

Thanks to the recent advancement of ubiquitous computing technology and deployment of the corresponding infrastructure, technical barrier to access the information about a robot and its surrounding environment is becoming low. This, in turn, gives us an anticipation that better robot services and related industry will make a rapid growth in a near future. The robot system technology research, based on the above change of technical environment and technology fusion characteristics inherent in the robot systems, develops core system technologies needed for implementing ubiquitous robot services.

To be specific, the robot system technology research develops technologies to integrate component technologies such as perception, localization, robot software platform, robot hardware SoC, sensors, navigation and manipulation and application technologies required to perform various robot service scenarios and tasks including robotic vehicles, entertainment robots, and so on.

  Study of Network Robot Technology

URC(Ubiquitous Robotic Companion: a network-based intelligent robot running over ubiquitous environment which is following me any place any time, for the sake of getting me necessary services) is a concept for positively coping with the intelligent robot market. For this purpose, OPRoS(Open Platform for Robot Services) has come to be defined. OPRoS deals with the compatibility between robot S/W platforms, the interoperability of a variety of communication and information devices, inter-connectability of heterogeneous networks, the S/W platforms, standards and implementation models for an intelligent robot.

In the Network Robot Research Team, a variety of URC platforms can be inter-connected by the standard procedures based on OPRoS requirements. The recognition, decision and control functions of a robot can be executed over the Intelligent Robot Server (OPRoS-Server). The essential components are implemented in the OPRoS-Server for robot contents and services which novice developers can make relatively easily use of. We are planning to develop an open framework that can utilize heterogeneous URC platforms and network infrastructure, and high availability OPRoS-Server architecture supporting 1000 connections per second simultaneously.

With the Network Robot Research project, we can blend network and intelligence, proactiveness and ubiquitous computing with the existing robot technologies, which is the first and new concept of information services in the world. We will lead the standardization of related technology and secure the patent through developing core technology to overcome space and functional limitations of robots. We are hoping that highly value-added industry can be created by combining IT and robot technology, which has high ripple effect to the industry with related to information and intelligence.

System Architecture of Intelligent Robot Server for Network Robot

  Study of Robot Client S/W Platform and Remote Control Technology

OPRoS(Open Platform for Robot Services) is a specification and implementation model of networked intelligent robots which provides software component reusability, device interoperability, heterogeneous network interconnectivity. The goal of OPRoS technology is to establish a specification and provide an implementation model of networked intelligent robots in order to develop complex and various robot applications more easily. The OPRoS specification is composed of OPRoS client, OPRoS server, communication protocol, development tools and application components specifications..

The Robot Client S/W Platform(OPRoS client) technology as a kind of the robot software platform necessary to sense the environments and control a robot provides a component and contents based robot application development framework for interoperability and interconnectivity of various networked robots. The OPRoS client technology consists of the robot component execution engine of providing various robot application design patterns and realtime/QoS, the robot contents execution engine of providing easy development of robot tasks/contents, the integrated robot application development tool, the seamless local server and communication protocol for lightweight small networked robots and the robot security.

The Robot Client S/W Platform can be applied to various kinds of robots such as service robots, unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles and military robots and remote control system through wireless communication.

Concept Diagram of Robot Client S/W Platform

  Study of Cognitive technology

Cognitive technology is essential in enabling a robot to recognize its environment and to interact with human and has massive impact on various fields of industries such as robot, digital home and telematics. ETRI has developed core cognitive technologies by converging various IT technologies with excellent competency. By distributing robot cognitive solutions to robot industry, ETRI is contributing for the expansion of domestic and foreign intelligent robot market. In this research field, we are developing various recognition technology such as multi-modal user recognition (face and speaker recognition) technology, intelligent human following, multi-modal gesture recognition, sound source localization, intelligent robot H/W standard reference model technology based on u-Robot, robot application core chip technology, SoC(System-on-a-Chip) IP technology and network based sensor data transmission and processing technology.

  Study of Mediated Interface Technology for Human-Robot Interaction(HRI)

A mediated Technology for HRI is defined as a portable, wearable haptic device and recognition technology that has several sensors to recognize user's gestures, motion, and attitude and communicates with a robot.
There are limits to make a variety of robot services using only voice & video recognition because the conventional voice & video recognition for HRI and recognition of robot's outer situation have a lot of restrictions in the real life environment. This research is one way to overcome above problems.

The goal of this project develops a fusion-type, portable, wearable, mediated HRI interface device that strengthens HRI fusing signals relating to user's gesture and bio-signal, and etc. based on multi sensors and voice & video signals.
The mediated interface technology for HRI puts the mediated device between a human and a robot and maximizes the interaction between humans and robots using the mediated device.
In the robot industry, the mediated research is the fundamental research step all over the world and a new attempt to differentiate its usage and effect from the haptic technology for the remote control of a specialized robot